Test Subjects
by IngridSarah
Summary: My ongoing 4x10 Juliet/Jack AU. Warning - This is a bit fragmented and something of a writing experiment for me, so please don't expect coherence! New chapter: "Paulina"
1. Strained

AN: A short little Juliet and Jack AU following the post-appendectomy scene in 4x10 in which Juliet tells Kate that Jack kissed her "to prove that he doesn't love someone else." I have wanted to write lost for quite awhile now but for some reason, I find it intensely difficult, particularly in the case of Juliet. Nevertheless, she's one of my favorite characters in the show, so I'm hoping to do more with her in the future.

I'm not usually a great 'shipper, but I must admit guiltily to this one: I love Juliet with Jack. I have been catching up with Lost on DVD, and I've been sort of perturbed by the inconsistency of characterization, especially regarding Jack—he goes from kissing Juliet to moaning over Kate over the course of a single episode! Here's how I would've had it go instead.

Strained

"I know you're awake." She watches his eyes blink open, black in the warm lamplight of the tent, unreadable. He's still playing dead, even now. It's predictable, just what she thought he would do: Juliet looks away from his face, tasting the bitterness of her own strained generosity. She presses the first layer of gauze to his stomach and watches the dark bleed through.

It's when she's taping him up, when she's getting ready to leave and get Bernard to relieve her, sure that there's nothing left to say, that she feels Jack wince, hears him clear his throat.

"I wasn't." His speech is slurred, and she can tell that he's struggling to stay awake. Though his eyelids are only half open, his eyes are on her, feverish and intense.

"What?"

"—wasn't trying to prove anything, Juliet, I just wanted to—" He chokes a little on the words, bends as if he's trying to sit up—

"Jack," she holds him down, her hand closing over his shoulder. Due to his injury, it doesn't take much to keep him there. If only it were so easy all the time, she thinks. "Don't move, ok? You can tell me whatever you want to tell me right here: I won't go until you're finished." She shivers despite herself, watching his eyes move to the place where she's touching him.

He huffs out a deep breath as though he's just run miles, and she can see the strain in his muscles, the wrinkles in his forehead as he raises his brow, like it hurts to say this.

"I just wanted to kiss you—I wanted to—"

She feels like her face has palsied when Jack lifts his hand to cover hers where it rests on his arm: she cannot bring herself to smile, to express anything. The palm of his hand is sweaty and hot, shaking with the effort of holding it there. He is looking at her earnestly, his eyes now wide, and then she feels that her hands are shaking too.

"Jack, you don't have to do this," she lifts their hands together, bringing his back to his side in a relaxed position, but doesn't let go yet.

"I wanted to make you feel safe; I wanted to feel safe—with you," he grinds out, and she feels like a vein is popping somewhere in her head. Her eye twitches and her lip trembles, and all she can think about is how hard this all seems for him, how unnatural. He is _making_ himself, focusing, heart beating hard in his chest (she feels it, not knowing when her hand made its way there). She keeps asking herself, "Should it be so hard? Should it take so much effort?"

But as she leans down toward him, she knows that the answer is yes. Her scalpel arm aches as she holds herself gently above him, her hair spilling onto his shoulder. She comes closer, catching one of his eyes, which has dilated beautifully, before it closes in anticipation. Her heart races as she moves in, and touching her lips to his makes everything hurt.

Time seems to slow down; her mouth sliding against his, every movement soft and deliberate. His tongue strokes hers back lazily, and she knows they need to stop this, because he's tired and drugged, and near passing out. But for a few moments she's in limbo, her body coming alive against his, skin prickling and damp, ready for something that she isn't—that neither of them are. He is panting when she pulls away, the sounds ragged and almost pained.

"Juliet," he breathes, hot against her face.

She strokes his cheeks and his hair, as his eyes close. His hand is still holding hers, knuckles white, fingers clutching hers. Like he's still in surgery and squeezing her for the pain. She waits for his fingers to loosen to retrieve her aching hand.

She waits for a long time.


	2. Finding Alteration

AN: I've decided to continue this "story," which I think for now will be more of a collection of random bits than a properly finished whole. Depending on how far I come with it, I may ultimately revise to make it more symmetrical.

Note: As if writing from Juliet's perspective wasn't task enough, I decided to take on 4x10 Jack in this one. I hope this doesn't come off too much like character analysis thinly disguised as fanfic, but I wanted to delve a bit into some of Jack's issues and where I see Darlton et al going wrong with the character. Please pardon the "bbb" – I don't have the new Word at the moment, and I absolutely hate the way f f dot net formats these documents with no spaces. This is my attempt to format the way I'd like.

bbb

Finding Alteration

bbb

Almost as soon as Bernard puts the chloroform-soaked rag to his face, Sarah appears. Or at least that's what it seems like to Jack. Drugged and cut open, he no longer has much of a sense of time.

He's leaning out a car window, watching that playground—her school's playground, where he's watched her before. It's different though now, in the dark. The whole place is still, or at least, he thinks it is, at first. It is only afterward that he realizes that the merry-go-round is still turning, and then suddenly, Sarah is standing next to the car.

"You've got to stop doing this, Jack," she cries (she is always crying in his memories: she was a happy person, but for some reason he can never remember her happy). "You've got to give it up."

"I'm trying," he answers, reaching out the window toward her.

"Are you?" she looks at his hand. He drops it. And that's all it takes: all Sarah needs to do is repeat his words, and then suddenly, he can see how ridiculous they are. He looks up at her, kicked, wondering if there is some part of him that likes to be kicked: that enjoys it. If there is, he can't feel it now.

"Jack, I'm leaving you."

I know, Sarah," he feels his eyes burn and grips the steering wheel hard.

She is always leaving him.

bbb

bbb

When he wakes up from his dream in pieces, he can feel a woman's hands on his stomach, stitching him back together, and it hurts.

"The other day when you came back from the other side of the island, Jack kissed me."

"Oh."

He doesn't open his eyes as they continue to whisper over him—instead, he shuts them, seeing the light of the lantern through his eyelids, seeing Sarah. Then Kate's voice melts slowly into Sarah's (but why Kate's? Juliet is supposed to look like Sarah, sound like Sarah).

"You've got to stop doing this, Jack."

_I'm trying_, he answers again.

He wanted Kate to hold the mirror, because Kate has been there since the crash, since the beginning, during that first time he needed stitches and hadn't had any mirror but her voice. He needed Kate to remind him who he was, to remind him _that_ he was.

Reaching for Kate is a pattern, and what is he, if he loses that pattern?

With Juliet, he isn't sure what he is. Chloroformed and in the dark. Groping for words. Acting on instinct. Juliet doesn't need him—she could leave at any time. When she told him she was on her own, he'd believed her. When he kissed her outside the Tempest, she was like a black hole, drawing him in. He'd put his hand on her waist, and felt the fear holding her together.

Juliet was right: he had kissed her for himself.

He had wanted desperately to comfort her, to touch her into distraction, to admit (honest, for once, with her) that he felt for her too. He had wanted to see her face change from fear to desire, to feel her warm pulse speed up beneath his fingers, to feel her cool skin flushed against his. Beyond all of those things, though, he wanted to see what _he_ would do if she kissed him back, if her eyes softened again and she took him back to her tent.

If he woke up holding Juliet to him, who would he be then?

"I know you're awake." His skin flushes hot in the confines of the tent as he opens his eyes, unable to look her directly in the eye. He's been caught, and once again, he's not sure what to say.

Kate's gone now, and Juliet's fingers are moving over his torso, hot and aching. He looks down at her white-gloved wrists, moving confidently over him. He can't see the wound, but he can feel cool water trickling over his abdomen and pooling slowly in his navel. His newly shaven skin feels prickly, oversensitive to the brush of her hands. When she releases him to tear some gauze tape resting on the tray beside him, he tries to imagine the incision, sewn up now with Juliet's careful stitches.

"Everything's back in the same place, I think," she'd said after the surgery.

But it isn't.

bbb


	3. ForestTrees

AN: Another sort of half-finished little sketch on which I've worked periodically. I may change it sometime if this ever develops into an actual story. We'll see!

DDDDD

Forest/Trees

DDDDD

When the sun goes down behind the trees, she and Jack are left in darkness that seems near absolute. Her smile falls away abruptly and then slowly, lopsidedly returns: _If someone smiles in the woods, and nobody's there to see it, has she really smiled?_

"Jack?"

"I'm here," he suddenly catches her elbow and she jumps, not expecting him so close. It's been a long time since she's jumped because it's been a long time since anything has surprised her. She flashes back to a sunny beach for a moment, flies and splinters and pink, puckered flesh. When she returns a moment later, she is breathless.

"Sorry," Jack's hand moves down her forearm softly, and then her eyes adjust, and the air is a tepid brown, the color of coffee. She can see him now, where they're connected, their arms tangled like the roots of the trees around them, inextricable. As he moves toward her, she looks up, worry in her eyes, though her body is as still as ever. Now she can read him and his careful movement toward her: she knows what's coming.

When he kisses her, all she can think at first is that there is something absurd about it, Jack's large shadow lighting on hers tenuously like a bird perching on a branch. His mouth is wet and gentle and so different from the firm press of before, his hand reaching out for her tentatively, his tongue dipping softly inside her.

It's a little awkward now, different from the first time because now he's serious, bent toward her, committed. His knuckles brush against her stomach before his fingers light on her waist.

Then, almost before she can reciprocate, he pulls back, his eyes as black as any animal's as he looks her over uncertainly, as though he's performed an experiment whose result it still uncertain. His expression flickers before her as it changes, small, subtle movements of muscle and bone like minute, unnamable variations in color. He is so different from her, so open, no matter how much he tries to hide. He sometimes reminds her of the anatomical man: she can see everything as it works, and she wonders how he can go on living so exposed.

Her heart squeezes shut as he touches her face, looking her over in the way he does sometimes, as if he's trying very hard to figure out whether he can trust her or not. She tries to reassure him with her expression, only to realize halfway through that the corner of her mouth isn't lifting as far as she'd hoped. She puts one hand on his shoulder to show him instead, stroking his skin until his eyes grow less anxious. When he realizes that she's leaning in for another kiss, he sighs audibly and moves to meet her, a look of relief washing over his features that is almost painful to watch.

He touches her cautiously at first, the fingers of his hand trembling gently against her hip, but when she opens her mouth again, he grasps her almost convulsively, pulling her against his body tightly, barely avoiding his still-healing scar. When her hips fit against his she makes no noise at the suddenness of the pleasure she feels pooling, spring-like, inside her.

As they kiss, a drop of water hits the back of her head and runs down her neck, shaken loose from the wet tops of trees that seem to stretch for miles above them. The distance suddenly reminds her of time, of things past, of Goodwin's body on the beach. She thinks of Ben's cold blue eyes and wonders whether he is watching her now. She flinches in Jack's arms; her skin breaks out in a chill.

"What's the matter?" He breaks away panting, then touches her hair gently, recalling her to herself—to the warmth of being here with Jack, alive. She nearly laughs at the poorly-veiled frustration in his tone, but stifles it in a smile at the last minute. Their foreheads touch; their cheeks brush. She looks doubtfully into his eyes, knowing he wants to protect her. She knows that he still thinks that he can, and it feels good to pretend with him for a moment, pressing into his warm body and letting him hold her.

"Nothing," she answers, kissing him again.

DDDDD


	4. Paulina

AN: Fair warning, peeps: this one comes as close as I do to writing pRon, which, sadly, isn't very close (even my sex is implied). But I've changed the rating to "M" for a few "suggestive" words here and there. And I am planning to continue this (thank you all for the feedback!). I will deal with the freighter & Naomi's crew eventually, as I hint at the end of this installment.

Regarding Jack's grandfather's watch in this chapter: the object is a reference to the first "mobisode"/"LOST: Missing Pieces"/web episode/whatever you want to call it, which you can see on YouTube if you've missed it. In the episode, Christian Shepard presents Jack with a watch which had been given to him by Jack's grandfather. Christian gives it to Jack as a wedding present/peace offering, telling him that he approves of Jack's choice in marrying Sarah. I haven't watched the show for a while, but I'm assuming that Jack has this watch with him on the island. If not, pretend he does. I thought it was a very interesting device, connecting Jack's choices, good and bad, to his understanding of time, which is why I decided to use it here.

DDD

Paulina

DDD

It's still dark when he wakes up, face buried in a sea of yellow waves. His half-closed eyes follow them down the smooth of Juliet's back in pure, lazy pleasure until they catch on the snowflake at the bottom, still pink and almost phosphorescent in the dark.

The sight burns him slightly, brings him back to himself.

Her arms are half around his neck, her expression against his shoulder naturally placid, unlike the premeditated calm of her waking hours, when she forces herself to become the eye of the island's storm. She looks different now in the context of his arms: for the first time, she seems to belong to his reality, to the world outside the island. When he closes his eyes and concentrates on the feeling of her body next to his, he can almost imagine that they're asleep in his bed in L.A.

But then the fantasy dissolves: in that world, he has no idea how he would find Juliet, how they would meet. She mentioned something about Florida—and he can visualize the space abstractly, the maps he learned in school and saw on television during elections, billboards full of sunshine and oranges, but he's never been to Florida, and he has no way to be certain of the things she's told him. Whether she grew up in Miami or on the island, her past is equally distant to him. No matter how he thinks about her, he has to take Juliet on faith.

And he's willing to do it—his stomach twists with the realization, the reflex of doubt and past disappointments tangling with his need to believe, which, though ailing, still proves stronger and more resilient than everything else. He needs to believe her on an almost visceral level: he's been strung out on doubt for months. Since they left the Others, Juliet has kept things from him, refused to speak, but she hasn't lied to him yet, and on this island, in his book, that almost qualifies her for sainthood.

He strokes her hair and tries not to make her into a saint, like he did with Sarah, and like Sarah did with him. He knows now that it isn't healthy, though sometimes even that can't stop him. He runs his fingers down each of Juliet's beautifully formed vertebrae and presses his lips against her neck, trying not to be reverent. She is real, he reminds himself, taking in her flushed and warm skin, her pink lips, the swell of her hips. He holds her close, hard but ignoring it, thinking that he's won. She's real: she's a woman, not a saint. Then she tightens her arms around him, pressing her cheek against his chest, and she feels so familiar somehow, so close, that it makes her strange and otherworldly all over again.

He looks to the corner of his tent as he continues to stroke her shoulders distractedly: he can see her clothes piled against his in the sand, his father's silver watch half-resting on her sleeve. It stopped hours ago, while he was unbuttoning her blouse—she'd stopped his unbuttoning because oddly, she'd seen the stillness of the hands, and he'd taken the watch off, thrown it in the sand. He had only just begun a bitter smile, a derisive joke about his father that she wouldn't understand pulling at the corner of his mouth, when she put her hand against his ribcage and nuzzled his neck, her lips pressing gently behind his ear. His pulse had leapt and he'd felt the heavy words fall away from him. He'd found himself forgetting, and all he could concentrate on then was pulling her close and trying to breathe.

Her skin was bare and soft against his body, distracting, and when he touched her, he felt as though he were moving backward and forward at once, taking off layers only to find her more opaque. Yet her eyes were lovely, loving, melting ice, and so he went on, not knowing whether he was coming closer or moving farther away.

It didn't change when she was moving on top of him, the slight pain under his scar every time Juliet slipped down and he couldn't help pushing up to meet her, the way she'd asked him if it hurt, if they should stop and he'd whispered "no" back before trying to distract her from the question with his fingers and his mouth. But as much as his eyes had been pulled toward her body, and all of the soft, warm, places he was touching, he couldn't help returning to her face again and again.

It was as though it had cracked, he thought at first, watching the muscles work as though he had never seen them before. She didn't look at him the whole time, but alternated, as she usually did, between him and the sky. When her eyes fell on him, they were so bright and swimming that he had twice felt compelled to ask her if she was all right. She only nodded at him, and then they were both quiet, moving, and the lines in her face moved with them, and he thought he could see pleasure in her expression, but he didn't know whether it was hers or his.

The helpless feeling rose up around him slowly, then overtook him like a flood of heat, and all he could do was move his hands over her once more, desperate to see her contented. He found himself whispering her name again and again, the three syllables becoming strange with the repetition so that after a few times around, he didn't know what they meant anymore, and just said, "please."

Her eyes closed then sharply, and he could see her mouth forming a beautiful, incomprehensible sound before her body contracted around him. He squeezed his eyes shut on the blurry picture, arching underneath her, moving his hands up to her hips, too overwhelmed to look, to know the answer to his question.

By the time he had opened his eyes again, she had allowed him to pull her down to him, but carefully, so as not to lean on his scar. Her breath was hot against his neck, and he became conscious of his own chest heaving. After a few minutes she rose to clean them both, helped him despite his protests, pointing to his injury and telling him he'd done enough that night to exacerbate it. When she leaned over him again he'd kissed her, then wrapped an arm around her and refused to let her go. She laughed softly in his ear, telling him reasonably and calmly that they had to get dressed, but he only held on tighter, not wanting her to leave.

He'd been surprised when she let him win the argument for once, pressing her cheek against his neck and closing her eyes. He felt time becoming blurry, the tent disappearing from around him into the dark, her soft skin fading away under his hands.

He'd dreamt strange dreams that he could only half-remember, of a world that didn't seem real anymore, of hospital halls and Sarah and his father, of his grandfather's watch full of sand.

DDD

"Hmm. Jack?" Juliet stirs in his arms and looks up at him. Before they focus, her eyes are strangely transparent, like those odd days when the water is so clear that he can see to the bottom of the ocean. They remind him of the way she looked at him outside the Tempest. Now, as then, he can see softness and hardness at once, the absolute unevenness of the deepest part of her. Now, as then, he is moved, drawn to her suddenly, so quick that it makes him a little queasy. The urge to fold her in his arms again and reciprocate with a confession of his own is strong, but he falters, paralyzed by years of doubt. Even if he did manage to loosen his tongue, he's not sure what he would say: every time he thinks he knows what he feels for Juliet, it changes, gets away from him.

"Hey," he softens his voice, looking down at her, smiling and monosyllabic. It's all he thinks he can manage for now.

"Are you ok?" her voice is almost comically sleepy, warm, as though she's asking him for five more minutes. Her lips tickle against his chest, and the sensation and sound combined endear her to him dangerously, tug at him in surprising places. He can't stop the corners of his mouth from turning up; he can't help from moving his hands gently over her body, trying to show her what he doesn't yet know how to say.

As she wakes up fully, she touches his belly, far enough away from his scar to make the twinge of pain remote: the pleasure is closer.

"Yeah, I'm good," he flushes despite himself, sliding a hand over hers and moving to kiss her. It doesn't matter to him now where she came from or whether he can ever know what happened during all the missing years: when they get onto the freighter, he knows where they're going, and he knows that they're going together.

DDD


End file.
